Peak Condition...

***Miles travelled today: 116

***Total Miles: 4517

***States travelled through: Stayed in South Dakota

This is for Wednesday 16th of June... (daytime - we have separated it into two entries as we have two sets of photos to upload!!!)

WOW!!! WOW!!! and WOW!!! again!!!

In researching this trip - there was something about the Badlands that really reached out to me... and it was somewhere that we decided to visit... well, we certainly were not disappointed... no words could ever describe the scenery... it is totally 'other worldly'... like nothing we had ever seen before... but really unbelievable in terms of driving along on the rim, with grasslands to one side, and then a drop off and these sand stone formations... we did a loop road trip... and we were fortunate enough to see a herd of wild buffalo... they were all the females with their young... which just made us stop and think about what this land must have been like years ago... we also saw prairie dogs... which look nothing like dogs at all, actually they look like a cross between a rat and a rabbit... if one can imagine what one of those might look like!!!

Our trip took us through two towns... one called Scenic... which as the guidebook says, someone who had a sense of humour must have named the town... our guide books are somewhat 'quirky'... and talk about things off the beaten path... not your every day touristy things!!! Well, Scenic was - to all intents and purposes - a ghost town... although there were still people living there - so I guess to the true sense of the word, it wouldn't be a ghost town... but we actually saw tumble weed as well!!!

Well, we carried on with the loop road... and came into the national park from a different angle, and at this point you were level with the sandstone formations, looking up at them... one can just imagine when the pioneers came across this land in their wagons... I bet there were a few choice words, that amounted to... "How on earth are we going to get across here?"

Well... it seemed somehow fitting that last week this time we were in Chicago - taking 300 photos of the most amazing architecturally designed buildings... and here we are a week later looking at architecture of a different kind, and the architect was mother nature!!!

After spending nearly the whole day in the 'Badlands', we made our way back to the hotel... where we spent some time relaxing in the pool... as we had decided that we wanted to go back to the 'Badlands' for sunset... as this would produce totally different photographs...